So, it turns out that Michael Avenatti is neither the hero we asked for, nor the hero we needed. And it also turns out that he’s really bad at crime. According to CNN, Stormy Daniels’ attorney was arrested in Manhattan on Monday, after he allegedly attempted to extort between $15-$20 million from Nike.
Charging the aforementioned, plus wire and bank fraud, the criminal complaint against Avenatti “describes a rapid investigation that unfolded over the course of just the past six days.”
According to the complaint, “Avenatti met March 19 with attorneys for Nike and threatened to release what he said were allegations of misconduct by employees on the eve of both its quarterly earnings call and the start of the NCAA tournament” at a press conference, unless “Nike made [between $15 and $20 million] in payments to him and an unnamed co-conspirator by hiring them to conduct an ‘internal investigation.’”
Being that that shit is textbook extortion, Nike’s outside counsel immediately contacted a federal prosecutor, who then had an attorney set up a recorded meeting with Avenatti. In that meeting, Avenatti told the attorney “”I’ll go take $10 billion off your client’s market cap … I’m not f***ing around,” among other things.
(This is probably a good time to mention that Avenatti was cruising around the Iowa State Fair last August, openly talking about running for president. Or maybe it isn’t, it’s been a tough week, already.)
He was then arrested outside the Nike attorneys’ offices, and charged simultaneously in New York and Los Angeles.
So here we are: a lawyer made famous by a porn star made famous by the President of the United States has made the biggest athletic apparel brand in the world the literal victim. This is 2019.
You can read more about it at CNN.
